August 12

August 12th (torrential downpours)
We were a bit in slow motion this morning and did not get on the road until 11 am which is a little late considering we had a long drive to Budapest. It was absolutely pouring all through the alpine area of Poland (south of Krakow) which made it quite impossible to enjoy the scenery. This is their skiing area and is set up for summer and winter tourism and seems to be a more affluent area of Poland. We passed through many towns where the churches were beyond capacity. These churches are huge and still there are people standing outside in the rain.
Today we drove into Slovakia at 1:15 pm and were through and into Hungary three hours later. This is a first for us – we went through a country without spending a cent. We should also note that we have noticed that the leaves are changing – Fall is coming.
Georg had picked a campsite in the centre of Budapest which turned out to be in the dead centre of “slumsville” and it was very over-crowded to say the least. Quickly adapted to ‘plan B’ and found another site at the other end of town, but getting there was a bit traumatic between Georg and I. Our initial impression of Budapest was “Holy Cow” – the main streets are eight lanes across, the Danube River is quite wide and looks like we are going to have some fun here. It is the first time we had a 10,000 note in our pocket -- the highest being 20,000. To put it into perspective, the camping is 6,700/night. We were both under the impression that more countries were using the euro, but turns out only the western countries in Europe.
Finally hunkered down, showered and ate dinner. This place is also very crowded and we plan on moving closer to the amenities in the morning. What is nice here is that there is free internet and breakfast.